


I'll be here 'till the end of time

by voices_in_my_head



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: 52 weeks challenge, Established Relationship, I have an ot3 wth?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-08-15 04:41:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8042950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voices_in_my_head/pseuds/voices_in_my_head
Summary: "There wasn’t really anything on his mind, not aside from the “how did I get this lucky?” vibe that he got every time he was around Steve and Nancy and they didn't shun him out."





	I'll be here 'till the end of time

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt for this week was: a story about a scientific discovery and as my friend said, everything is a science, AKA photography. Also, wth is Stranger Things? I wasn't supposed to want to write for them but now there's ot3?? What??

Jonathan laid down while Steve and Nancy got up. Nancy didn’t like feeling dirty so she was always the first one to get up and go to the bathroom while Steve simply seemed to like the way his muscles felt after sex and liked to stretch – and to show off, of course. Jonathan, however, liked to stay in bed, feeling too tired to move and anyhow, he liked to hear the other two move around the room. In the first few weeks he’d heard a lot of grumbling, Nancy never being able to find her clothes, Steve always hitting his foot on something just lying on the floor but over time they’d gotten used to it all.

“Whatcha thinking about?” Steve asked with a smile and Jonathan remembered Nancy telling him in a whisper that Barbara had always called it his All American Hero Smile before she’d gone silent, remembering her lost friend and then Jonathan had hugged her.

Now, he just shrugged. There wasn’t really anything on his mind, not aside from the “how did I get this lucky?” vibe that he got every time he was around Steve and Nancy and they didn’t shun him out. Part of him still thought this was just a high school experiment, but he was slowly getting better at accepting that Steve and Nancy genuinely cared for him, _loved_ him, and that there was no longer a SteveandNancy + Jonathan but now it was SteveandNancyandJonathan, at least in their little world.

“Hey, I’m supposed to be the one with the head always in the clouds, remember?” Steve asked with his big smile and Jonathan rolled his eyes. Steve loved acting like he really was just a dumb jock but Jonathan knew he was in fact very smart, if lazy.

“What are you thinking about?”

“You, and Nancy and how I’m the happiest man alive,” Steve told him straight away and this smile had been named by Nancy the Prince Charming one and Jonathan couldn’t help but to blush, even though Steve told him corny stuff all the time. In the beginning he’d said it mostly to Nancy and it had gone unspoken that he meant the same for Jonathan but lately he’d become more open. Perhaps it was the fact that they were graduating in just some months and then would all leave Hawkins.

Jonathan finally deigned to move from the bed and picked the camera from the nightstand.

“Really?” Steve asked with an arched eyebrow but he was used to how the camera was almost like a third arm to Jonathan. He immediately posed to the camera, not feeling ashamed for even one second of his nakedness and once upon a time Jonathan had been envious of that confidence, that just seemed to pour out of Steve, but now he just felt safe, like he was rubbing off on him and Jonathan could steal a piece of that confidence for himself.

The clicking of the camera was the only sound in the room for some seconds. Jonathan already had dozens, if not hundreds, of pictures of Steve, Nancy and on some rare occasions of the three of them, but he just couldn’t put it down.

“Really, guys?” Nancy said with a roll of her eyes from the doorway and Jonathan immediately moved the camera to her. She was standing with just a towel wrapped around her and he felt his stomach squeezing at the pure domesticity from it all.

Steve went to her, still naked, and started swirling her around.

“No, Steve, no! The towel, it’s gonna fall!” Nancy told him, but she was laughing and Jonathan kept clicking away.

“So? It’s not like there’s anything we haven’t seen before. In fact, I’m sure neither of us would mind seeing it again. Isn’t that right, Jonathan?”

Steve was looking at him and smiling, telling him to go along with it, while Nancy was pretending to be upset.

“I’m not taking another shower,” Nancy told Steve in her serious voice.

“Maybe this time we could join you,” Steve said and tried to bite her on the neck but was stopped by Nancy’s hand on his forehead. She was arching an eyebrow at him and Jonathan took a picture even though he had dozens of pictures just like this one, with Nancy looking at Steve fondly, yet exasperated.

“I’m not explaining to my mother how we broke the shower. Again,” Jonathan put in and received a look from Nancy that said, “thank you” and a betrayed one from Steve.

“Come on, it’s time for your picture to be taken,” Steve said and let go of Nancy, going to sit at the end of the bed. He reached for Jonathan’s camera, who was more unwilling to let go due to the fact that he truly preferred being behind the lens than in front of it than because it was Steve reaching for it. “Come on, pretty boy.”

Jonathan handed over the camera with a slight blush. Steve liked his nicknames and once again that used to be something he just said to Nancy but now he gave them out equally.

Steve didn’t really know how the camera worked aside from the basic, “you push the button and a picture is taken” but he was still careful with it, more careful than Jonathan had expected the first time he’d lent it to him. Steve didn’t take multiple pictures of one thing. He made sure he had the perfect shot, holding it for several seconds, before taking it.

Jonathan wanted to reach for a pillow, to cover himself up, but Steve was still sitting naked so he decided he could do it too. Like Steve had said, there wasn’t anything either of the others hadn’t seen before and Jonathan was very careful about where he put certain pictures of them.

Nancy moved to sit beside him, now in her underwear, and she was making stupid faces at the camera and Steve was laughing and Jonathan slowly started to smile too, mostly when he looked at Nancy.

“Why do you like photography?” Steve asked, putting the camera beside him, making sure that it was secure.

It was the fourth time Steve was asking him that and every time Jonathan gave a different answer, though they were all truthful. He’d told him how it made him feel like he was alone in the world, how it didn’t make him feel lonely and how it made him feel like he belonged elsewhere. His mother had told him those were contrary answers but Nancy and Steve had always just smiled at him.

“It makes me understand the models better. People, things… It’s like I’m closer to them and can see things that with a human eye I couldn’t.”

Nancy put her arms around her knees beside him. “Aren’t you ever afraid of what you’re going to see?”

Jonathan thought that she was probably talking about the monster they’d seen in his last picture of Barbara but he thought back to being twelve and taking pictures of his parents and seeing the way his dad’s mouth pulled angrily down and how his mom’s eyes looked sad.

“Sometimes the truth hurts, but it’s better than living in a lie, isn’t?” The reply came from Steve, who was looking attentively at both of them and Jonathan wondered what he was thinking about, if he was imagining a life where neither of them had been brave enough to make that first move and they’d kept living in that limbo of, “should we do this or not?”

Nancy didn’t reply and Jonathan put his arm around her shoulders. She’d told both of them in whispers that Barb’s parents were doing their best to pretend their daughter was safe and sound, that she’d simply run away, but that she couldn’t pretend like that and how she was trying her hardest to never have to come face to face with them because she wasn’t sure she would be able to go along with the lie.

Jonathan wondered if Will had truly been dead if it would have been better never to know, to imagine that was he was alive, just far from them. It wasn’t a thought he wanted to reach the end.

“Hey, come on, guys, stop being morose. We still have two hours before Mrs. Byers is home and the nerd club doesn’t close until nine.”

Nancy rolled her eyes at the last part and Jonathan smiled. Steve sometimes accompanied him to picking up Will and they’d developed a strange friendship. Well, strange for Jonathan, the two of them didn’t seem to find it weird at all, especially when Steve had taken an interest in Dragons & Dungeons and always asked Will how the game had gone.

“You’re the nerd,” Jonathan said and Steve lunged at him.

“Who you calling nerd, you nerd?” Steve asked but he was tickling Jonathan, who was trying to run from his fingers.

“Guys, come on, could you please act like grown-ups?” Nancy asked, trying to escape their fake wrestling but Jonathan could hear the smile in her voice.

“Oh, did you hear that, Jonathan? Miss Nancy Wheeler wants us to act like grown-ups. Well, I’m sorry miss, but I’m not turning eighteen until next month and neither are you or Jonathan, so what you ask is simply impossible. Yes, impossible, I say,” Steve said in a fake British tone, still on top of Jonathan and not letting him go anywhere.

“You’re the impossible one, you know that?” Nancy asked in a fond tone, bending to kiss Steve on the nose.

“You hear that, Jonathan? I’m impossible. But I think you forgot to finish that sentence. Impossibly awesome? Impossibly hot? So many options.”

“Impossibly egomaniacal,” Nancy said with a snort.

“Oh big word. How is it spelled?” Steve asked and Nancy slapped him lightly on the head.

The two of them kept bickering and Nancy slide down until she was lying completely on the bed and Steve got more comfortable on top of Jonathan, clearly trying not to get hurt by his bony body and Jonathan just smiled contently at the two of them.

 


End file.
